There is a lot of money going into Irish communications providers at the moment. We are aware of a number of companies that are looking for tens of millions of investments.
The figure is down somewhat from quarter one of 2005, but you have to remember there was a number of individual spectacular deals in the period including an 18 million investment in Irish Broadband. Overall we expect this year to be flat or even a bit better when compared to 2005.
In our experience, first quarter funding figures are usually high because of the backlog from the previous year. Pre-Christmas closing means deals often drift into January.
